


blossoms and books, those solaces of sorrow

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anxiety, Autistic Frisk, Benevolent Player, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - C-PTSD, Hanukkah, Nonverbal Chara, Nonverbal Frisk, Other, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Puberty, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 16:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13217331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Ostensibly, you’re spending Hanukkah at Asgore’s because he hasn’t had holiday visitation time in a while, and Toriel is busy with grading papers and writing lesson plans and planning bigger and better things for the monster school.The real reason is rather more sobering than that.





	blossoms and books, those solaces of sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> _(a bridge of paper and ink_ \- i need you to be gentle to me. i need you to hold my hand. (...) it’s okay to sometimes be tiny and shaking and [afraid](https://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/155312036234/).)
> 
> this fic touches briefly on teen sexuality and characters having complicated feelings about their own experience of sexuality/physical attraction in light of a) past trauma, b) shitty pervasive myths about the aftereffects of abuse, and c) societal demonization of sexuality in general. if you don't want to look at that kind of topic, then this story is probably not for you.

Toriel takes the slow way up to Asgore’s. In a show of great magnanimity Asriel has deigned to let you have the front seat; he and Frisk are asleep on each other in the back. Toriel has the heat on and it’s seeping into your sneakers; she let you bring the comforter of your bed to wrap up in, put it in the dryer for five minutes so that you could curl up in the warm.

The radio is on to a classical station but so low that you can ignore it if you want to. It’s snowing in fat flakes so thick that you can see the little feathery crystals when they land on the windows. Nobody else is out here on the back roads, so Toriel has the van’s high beams on, letting you stare into the falling snow and the glittery snowbanks.

You’ve been driving for an hour or so, probably, and it’s still going to take another hour-ish until you arrive. Yeah, Toriel’s probably putting off handing you and the others over to Asgore as long as possible, but this is also absolutely for your benefit, even if everyone else is too nice to say so.

“Are you quite comfortable, my dear?” Toriel says softly, too softly to rouse Asriel and Frisk. She’s looking at you from the corner of her eye.

You make a quiet sound in affirmative and nod too just in case.

 

 

Ostensibly, you’re spending Hanukkah at Asgore’s because he hasn’t had holiday visitation time in a while, and Toriel is busy with grading papers and writing lesson plans and planning bigger and better things for the monster school.

The real reason you’re headed there, though, is the creaky board in the hallway at Toriel’s house, the one that goes off like a saw every time anyone steps on it, the one that makes you a little nervous at the best of times but can wake you up from any dead sleep if Toriel forgets or has a guest over past your bedtime. And this time of year turns you to tinder anyways, so whenever a foot finds the creaky board you’re up for hours crying and shaking and sick, dizzy with panic even sitting next to Toriel on the sofa with warm chocolate milk to drink.

The real reason you’re going to Asgore’s is because Hanukkah is so close and because people have stepped on the board three times this week and you can’t even sleep without a nightlight anymore, because after the third time you started feeling constantly sick and lost your appetite and every time you so much as _consider_ speaking out loud it’s so overwhelming you feel like you’re going to cry.

The real reason you have to stay at Asgore’s is because you have a shiny new daily pill planner box in translucent green to match the blue one Frisk has had for a year and a half now. You’ve never been on antidepressants or anxiolytics before, and you need a grown-up to monitor you, and Toriel is too busy. Asgore doesn’t have gardening work in the winter and there’s nothing political coming up, so he’s free to watch you all the time.

You ought to be happy that she trusts him with you—it’s a big step in repairing what you set them up to break, so long ago. But instead you’re just humiliated to be so needy, and frustrated that even now, a hundred and two years into the future when the people who terrorized you worst are all dead and gone, you’re still too fucked-up to enjoy your own holidays in peace.

At times like these you sort of—no. You really genuinely do miss the player, hectic and awful as it was having to constantly play telephone with them and Frisk to get anything done, weird and fretful as it was living a game within a game. They always took you and Frisk by the hand and guided you through things with determination as thick and rich as warm honey. It would be nice to have a little of that conviction, that surety back right now. It would be nice to have someone there to make sure you’re going to survive the next week.

 

 

You wake up about five or six times throughout the night.

The first few times are the worst—you don’t remember where you are or why you’re here immediately—but then you get used to awakening to your room at Asgore’s, and it’s easier to go back to sleep then.

It would be even better if you could turn all the lights on or wind up your music box, but it would be too bright for Frisk, and the noise would risk waking them or Asriel. And besides, you do have your nightlight from Toriel’s place, and here the bed is big enough for all three of you, so you’ve got them on either side of you, warm and heavy.

This still is not a good recipe for waking rested in the morning. In the end the only reason you follow Frisk and Asriel out into Asgore’s house is because you doubt that you could get back to sleep without them.

Your foster father is there to greet you in the kitchen, frying toast in a pan for Frisk and Asriel, preparing rice porridge in a pot for your breakfast. The three of you sit at the table barefoot in pajamas while he bustles; Frisk and Asriel’s meals are finished before yours, and both of them gobble up their french toast with a rapacity that you have to look away from.

“Dad can we go outside and have a snowball fight _please,”_ Asriel says probably as soon as his mouth is no longer full. He’s even bouncing in place.

“Well, hmm,” Asgore replies, genial. “Please do make sure that you and Frisk come in when I call you for lunch, and be sure to bundle up nice and warm.”

 _“Yesssssss,”_ Asriel says, bouncing up and down even faster. “We barely got to play in the snow at all last year! Like, what’s even the _point_ of having snow if Mom’s just gonna say we gotta do our homework instead of playing in it!”

 _It’s nice that it snowed so much earlier this year than it did last year, isn’t it,_ Frisk says, beaming at you both from across the table.

“Remember, Frisk,” Asgore says as he places a small bowl of rice on the table before you, “you must be back at twelve o’clock sharp so that you and Chara can both take your medicine.”

The rice is sweet and sticky and bland. Your bowl is very small, about half the portion size that you’d usually be eating, but you’re not sure you can even finish it without making yourself sick.

 _I’ll remember,_ Frisk says, beaming. The snap of their wrists as they sign is bright and lively, pulling your eyes after them, and you hate them just a little for their vigor.

Asriel is already up and out of his chair, dashing back to your room to change clothes; Asgore pulls out his own chair and sits carefully, looking directly at you.

“It is all right if you cannot finish breakfast,” he says very gently. “We will warm up some more porridge for you in three hours.”

Everyone already seems to be assuming that you’re going to be staying indoors, but you don’t correct them, because you will be. Just the thought of running around playfighting with Asriel and Frisk out in the cold makes you want to curl up and die a little. So you just sign _ok_ roughly and go back to picking at your rice.

You’re not looking at Frisk when they get up from the table, but you see their feet stop on the floor next to you, and you’re already half raising your chin when they tap on your shoulder.

 _I’ll make sure we come back in on time,_ they say, smiling with their eyebrows squinched in like they’re apologizing. _I think Asriel kind of just wants to burn off all our extra energy beforehand so that we don’t jumpscare you goofing off inside later._

You sigh and nod. Frisk leans in and kisses your forehead.

Their mouth is soft and smooth instead of chapped like yours and even in your state it rings through your skull like the belltower in the town park, but it’s not enough of a distraction to take your eyes off their boobs, which are the same level as your face when they bend like this.

You try not to stare at them so much, _really_ you do, you’d hate it if they or Asriel started ogling your own thankfully-meager chest, but sometimes you _want_ to stare. You want to touch. It makes your stomach twist and alarms flash up and down your spine because surely it means there’s something wrong with you, to think of them like you do, to think of _Asriel_ like you do. You’re all still just in middle school and sure puberty is bearing down on every one of you like a freight train but it still makes you feel like a sicko to be so _aware._ Like one too many bad things happened to you a long time ago, and now you’re bad and wrong inside, just one more lingering poison.

Your therapist has told you more than once that this is normal for someone your age and the things you’ve internalized are myths that have long since been disproven. They are probably just trying to make you feel better about yourself.

But the shadows along the front of Frisk’s pajama shirt are soft, and the front is gapping in between its buttons. You deliberately look at the wall instead, because if you look too closely the image is never going to leave your brain and you’ll probably have to kill yourself again or something to make amends.

Both Frisk and Asriel would, you think, be pissed with you if you killed yourself again. So.

Frisk pats you on both shoulders and smiles and follows after Asriel. You squeeze your eyes shut and push the half-eaten bowl of porridge away.

Asgore scoops it up so quickly that his fur brushes against your retreating fingers. “Let me just get this into the fridge,” he says, smiling; you rest your elbows on the table and put your chin in your palms and follow him with your eyes as he bustles through the kitchen. “My child,” he says, “would you like to help me sort tea ingredients while the others are outside?”

It probably won’t be strenuous, and it will be something to concentrate on. So, tired as you are, you nod at him.

 

 

Asgore has a television now. It’s still not the latest model, apparently, though it’s a lot nicer than anything your blood family ever had and seems incredibly futuristic compared to TVs from 2015.

Most of what’s on TV are (ugh) Christmas specials, but Asgore just selects radio stations (?!) from the channel guide menu and finds a history channel, sort of a futuristic version of a podcast, where they’re having an hour-long talk about the Maccabees. He puts it on at a low volume, and the two of you return to the kitchen, where he’s gotten out glass jars of all different kinds of dried leaves, flowers, and other ingredients like fruits and seeds.

“I have recipes written down on these note cards,” he says, “so will you use the measuring spoons to fill each sachet with the correct ingredients? It does not matter if the amounts are not perfectly precise.”

 _How many should we do?_ you ask him.

“Until you get tired is fine, or otherwise until we run out of sachets,” Asgore says, and he touches your back very gently. “Either way, by the time we are done with these and the program is all over, it will be time to get you something else to eat.”

Asgore has to unscrew the lids on the bigger jars—your hands aren’t big enough or strong enough to get proper traction. But once he has, you squint at the recipe cards and get to work.

There are a lot of different variations on Earl Grey and breakfast teas—some with flowers, some with spices, some with green tea leaves or rooibos substituted for black tea. Asgore even has a little tin of crumbled-up baking chocolate, which you would raid surreptitiously if you were feeling better.

You wave at him a little to get his attention. _How about adding lime or lemon zest to some of these instead of the bergamot?_

Asgore nods to you, his mouth crinkling behind his beard and his eyes twinkling at you. Much as you don’t want to think about (ugh) Christmas right now, it reminds you of how he apparently got out his old Santa suit for some publicity event in the city last year. He probably made a good Santa; at least judging by all the stupid Christmas songs and stories that you had to pickle in at elementary school, he’s got the smile down pat.

“That sounds like an excellent idea for an experiment, my dear,” he tells you. “Please, by all means set some sachets aside, and we can try them out later.”

Mostly, you work in quiet. The radio program is doing an in-depth comparison of the mythologized version of the Hanukkah story and actual historical records of the Maccabean Revolt. The especially Talmud-heavy parts of the discussion lose you a little, because you never exactly had access to religious texts as a young kid and you’re still too overwhelmed with the stress of being alive and dealing with the goings-on around you to figure out where to attempt to study Talmud nowadays. But the radio hosts move on from the Maccabees and talk about Hannah and her sons, and then they talk about Judith, and it is basically the best podcast you have ever listened to, forever.

After the program ends, Asgore has you stop and warms up the rest of your uneaten breakfast; you pick slowly through it while he finishes up tea sachets and lines them up in boxes according to the ingredients.

 _Do you need help putting things away?_ you ask, suddenly fidgety.

Asgore shakes his head slowly. “No, it is all right,” he tells you. “You would not be able to reach some of the cabinets anyway. Please, focus on eating as much as you comfortably can for now. Taking care of yourself is your primary job for this holiday, and it’s a very important one.”

You’re not sure you agree with _important_ but you have your orders and you get the weird sense that this is one of those times when Asgore _won’t_ bend if you try to wheedle with just the right amount of sadness. It’s not big enough a deal to merit trying, either way; your foster father’s such a softheart that you actually genuinely feel too bad to manipulate him except when the situation desperately calls for it. Besides, if Frisk notices you’ve done it they get all bruised at you on his behalf.

The spoon clinks at the bottom of the bowl, muffled by the grit of rice residue, almost wholly camouflaged by the sounds of Asgore straightening up the table. He would wash it for you if you asked but you take it to the sink and fill it with water yourself, spurred by some probably childish need to not feel like a total invalid.

 

 

Frisk and Asriel come in maybe an hour and a half later, not quite a quarter to noon. Asriel’s fur is caked with snow, where there are only thick flakes in Frisk’s hair; it seems clear who won the snowball fight, or at least who dodged best. From his seat beside you on the couch Asgore gently advises his son to go take a shower to warm up and get changed. Frisk shoves at his back until he obeys.

They take off their own coat and hang it on the back of their chair, then stretch, flushed with exercise and victory. You deliberately look away when you see their shirt begin to ride up.

It’s still crooked, caught on their belt loop, when they appear before you in the living room. You set your knitting down on the coffee table as an excuse to avoid looking, watching them bounce on the balls of their feet impatiently. Usually they would be poking you or sticking their hands in front of your face to wiggle them wildly in a grab for your attention, but you think Toriel or Asgore or both have warned them and Asriel both to be careful not to startle you. It’s hard to be irritated at your new invisible Handle With Care label when you truly do feel like cracked glass.

You smooth the wrinkles in your pajama pants and then tilt your chin up, try to fast forward past everything until you get to Frisk’s face.

 _Medicine!!!_ they sign at you, emphatic, like it’s exciting to have a new buddy to be on drugs with them.

“Yes, it would be good to get everything ready so that you can take them as close to noon as possible,” Asgore says, and stands up. The sofa cushion you’ve been sitting on rises now that it no longer has to bear his weight. “Remember, Chara, you must take them with water only.”

You nod. You know. You read the instructions too, probably exactly as many times as Toriel has.

 

 

Half a pill, white and chalky along the edge where Toriel used a snap cutter to divide it. You watched her pop the pills out of the bubble sheet with one clever claw and do them all at once, neatly filling the compartments of your pill planner.

You’re expecting it to taste sickly sweet like aspirin or gross and bitter like that time Toriel had you on antibiotics, back when everyone was scrambling to get your vaccinations up to date and couldn’t catch up in time. It tastes like nothing, mostly, a little lump of void on your tongue. You sip from your glass and don’t even feel it go down.

Frisk has the same half a pill as you, plus their daily steroid. They knock both back at the same time like a pro, and chase the drugs with water when Asgore looks at them mildly. Toriel would have lectured about esophagus linings and whatnot, but for Frisk just the look is enough.

 

 

The afternoon is groggy and slow and you have no way of telling whether it’s a side effect or just your lack of sleep. You spend it quiet under the comforter Toriel sent you with, freshly tumbled in the dryer for an extra five minutes, plus the quilt Asgore usually has folded over the back of the sofa, which had therefore in your eye been more of a decoration than something for practical use up until today.

You’ve probably read the same paragraphs of the book on your knees about six times already, but you can’t stay focused, and you’re not so impatient that it really bothers you. The pressure of the two blankets is calming, like the weave of the cushions under your bare feet.

Asriel spent about an hour sitting behind you at first, soft furry belly pressed against your back and warm as a furnace, right arm lazy around your waist. That was more of a distraction than the half-assed state of dissociation you’re in now: It made your pulse skitter in your throat and chest, goosebumps risen on your skin wherever your bodies were in contact, a sort of tiptoes breath-held feeling like trying not to be caught out at being bad.

Eventually he got bored and left, though, and so you wedged yourself against the sofa arm, glad to be safe from thoughts of what Asriel’s fur would have felt like if your skin were bare and of the craving for him to hold you tighter. (There is something wrong with you, that you alone keep thinking these things.)

Presently Frisk appears with a dreidel and a bag of marbles and a wicker basket, beaming with the sort of confidence that bowls one over. They taught you the signs for the toy and each of its sides last year; you can still play while nonverbal. You set your book aside.

You can still handily beat Asriel at dreidel while half dissociating, it transpires. Frisk snaps up any marbles in the basket that your spins fail to collect, and in less than five minutes Asriel is frowning in that comfortingly sour sore-loser way, eyes narrowed poutily.

“You’re cheating somehow,” he grouses. “I want a different one.”

 _We’re all using the same dreidel,_ you inform him, half laughing. _It’s certainly not as though it’s weighted._

 _You know the rules,_ Frisk presses, grinning wide. _Shin means put one in!_

Asriel drops his last marble in the basket, grumbling, and pushes himself to his feet, toes flexing on the carpet as he sulks off.

Frisk takes the top and spins it, snickering. It lands on nun for them, so they just pass it to you. _He’s such a brat??? It’s cute???_

 _It is._ This burns in your face to admit, and you flick your wrist to spin the dreidel; it topples over onto gimel, so you scoop Asriel’s marbles out of the basket to add to your light-speckled hoard.

Frisk’s hands intrude on your field of vision, cupped around their own marbles—cat’s eyes in primary colors, solid-color translucents with tiny bubbles trapped in them like amber one might expect ancient insects to be trapped in if this were a paleontology flick.

You make one soft noise and look up at them; they shrug. Their face is very close. “You were beating me anyway,” they say out loud, a husky half-whisper that sends pleasant prickles up the small of your back.

You want to reach up to grip their face and pull them in, then go find Asriel and repeat the process with him, but this isn’t a special occasion the way it was last year. Even in your own mind you’re not quite sure if you’re trying to find an excuse to kiss your best friends on the mouth again or to avoid doing so. The clatter of them dropping the handful of marbles on top of your tiny marble hoard makes you jump a little where you sit. Frisk smiles and leans back, and then they get up and walk away.

So you lean up against the side of the sofa and pull the blankets back around you in a loose cocoon. The pressure of the cushion’s edge against your forehead feels good, solid and grounding.

Around you, the room feels like a snow globe so full of glitter that it more closely resembles a small child’s toy, sparkling gel and sequins encased in glass. Like a new director gone overboard with post-production effects, the foreground and the background shiny and softly blurred, filaments of light and dust motes glowing. Like bokeh vibrating gently or a long-exposure photograph of a busy highway. You close your eyes and press your head harder to the furniture. Like you could lift the foot that’s still settled in feeling and reality, and dance like wind from your body, shying away from the lingering fever and the unspeakable wet.

 

 

The grogginess never fully abates, but you almost feel better half-asleep.

Asriel comes to rouse you in the afternoon, plying you with a single piece of green bean tempura at the end of a fork; you bite down before it dawns on you that he has a small plate balanced in his other paw and intends to feed your afternoon mini-meal to you like you’re a baby or some sort of injured animal. You can feel your whole face flush in the span of a few seconds.

“It’s your prize for winning dreidel,” Asriel says stoically. The upwards curve of the corners of his mouth betray him, but you can hardly un-bite the green bean at this point, so you just chew it. “Frisk said they wanted to try out using the deep fryer for tempura and that since these turned out okay they’re making karaage and a new latke recipe for dinner. We played around with it for a while and you get all the good ones, we ate the stuff that came out weird. You can pretend you’re royalty and I’m your cute servant who waits on you hand and foot. Plus Dad said to make sure you don’t eat too fast ‘cause that’ll make you feel sicker.”

You swallow the bean, regard Asriel for a while for effect, and then slowly raise your middle finger at him. He just gives you a Look that he probably believes to be more reproachful than it is and spears a fried carrot on the end of the fork, offering it. You keep staring to make sure he knows you’re not impressed, and only then do you bite.

Despite yourself, you let Asriel feed you the whole contents of the plate; you feel extraordinarily silly about it, and it’s a close tightrope walk balancing the frustration at being judged unfit to perform such a basic action for yourself versus how nice it is to feel cared for. He sets the plate and fork on the coffee table and then scoots in close, puts both arms around you and pulls you to his chest, blanket cocoon and all.

“Nice and warm,” he comments. You can feel the words buzz against your temple where it touches the side of his throat. His heartbeat’s steady against the edge of your jaw.

He’s the same height as you and Frisk now, where he’s always been a little shorter before. Starting next year he’s probably going to get bigger than you—his parents are so huge.

Well. You’ll be bigger too, even if you’re not going to crack seven feet. It’s probably fine to leave crossing that bridge for Future Chara to handle.

 

 

You and Frisk argue briefly about the candles and the lighting thereof; Frisk wins. Or you let them win because you want them to be right, which probably still counts as them winning.

To this day you are not entirely sure what denomination your mother belonged to; if she were Orthodox or Conservative she’d have been raised with a lot of strict tradition, some of which she ought to have taught you, but maybe she never cared enough to hold to it, or maybe she’d rejected or been rejected by that tradition. She was religious enough to celebrate the holidays she could with you alone at home together, but not religious enough to keep doing so when your father hurt her for doing it. She never talked to you about her life before she married him. It’s just one more way you grew up severed from your entire heritage.

Frisk’s parents and the temple community they had occasional contact with as a kid, though, were all Reform, and thus they were raised not only with the knowledge that you’re not supposed to follow the mitzvahs to the extent of hurting yourself, but with the firm outlook that minhag and halacha both need to be interpreted flexibly to coexist with the modern day.

They can’t sing, and you definitely can’t sing right now, and it might or might not be sacrilegious to have Asgore or Asriel to sing the blessings in your place since they’re both gentiles. But the blessings still need to happen, so it should be fine if you sign them while they light the candles. You guess that sounds fair; even putting your nonverbal episodes and their autism aside, there are probably plenty of practicing Jews in the world who are physically incapable of speech, and they’ve got to celebrate somehow.

Frisk goes on to argue that given your mental state it would be more practical to light the candles with monster fire than the standard non-magical variety.

 _Okay, that’s almost DEFINITELY not kosher,_ you protest.

 _Electric menorahs are technically allowed if there’s some reason fire’s not a good idea though,_ Frisk says. _So I don’t see why monster fire would be a problem, especially since it won’t freak you out._

It occurs to you that you don’t actually know the sign for hanukiah to correct Frisk’s inaccurate terminology, so you just breathe out frustratedly through your nose. _I guess._

Hebrew and Yiddish both have their own varieties of sign language, you think, but you only know ASL. You have to translate the prayers into English quickly in your head while Frisk gets Asgore to produce a ball of silver fire between his broad palms, so you won’t lag behind them when they’re lighting the other candles with the shamesh.

Nervousness still worms in your stomach when they set the hanukiah on the windowsill, white flames reflecting cheerful against the glass. But this window faces Mt. Ebott and not the town, and it’s not as if anyone’s going to be up there; Asgore’s house is the closest dwelling to the mountain even here in Monster Town. So maybe that’s why the nervousness is just unpleasant squirming instead of another full-fledged anxiety attack. Or maybe the medicine is working.

It’s still far too early to tell.

 

 

Instead of pan latkes Frisk makes small thick ones about the size of your palm, deep-fried like the chicken that’s tonight’s other main dish. Your portion’s about half the size of everyone else’s, but this is probably for the best.

 _I wanna try making mini ones too,_ Frisk is signing proudly. _Like, macaroon size._

They’re not at all like the sort Frisk usually makes, but nor do they taste anything like your mother’s, so that’s good enough for you.

 

 

You rouse from muddled dreams with the room still only illuminated by your nightlight and then wake the rest of the way because Frisk’s breast is pressed against your upper arm and, somehow, Asriel has got your shin sandwiched between his thighs. You have to deliberately stare up at the ceiling and take deep breaths before you begin to extricate yourself; you were led to believe that SSRIs had a good chance to tank your sex drive, but it appears that you aren’t so lucky.

It’s still two in the morning according to the wall clock, but you’re definitely not getting back to sleep _now._ So you crawl down to the end of the bed in hopes of avoiding waking anyone, slide over the edge, and tiptoe into the hallway.

Downstairs the lights are still on; almost certainly Asgore still at work. Toriel would scold, but you know he won’t, so down the staircase you go.

“Chara,” he says when you enter the living room, already having heard or seen you. The floorboards here are cold but do not creak under your feet. “Would you like a cup of tea? I will get you something that is not caffeinated.”

You nod, and return to your place on the sofa from earlier, retrieving the quilt to wrap around yourself.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Asgore asks from the kitchen, looking over his shoulder at you; you shake your head in response. “No tachycardia or anything? It may be the medicine, then. Tori..el did tell me that sleep troubles are a common side effect.”

Even if you could speak and he were not a room and a half away, you would not comment on the conspicuous pause.

He brings you a cup and saucer and sets it on the coffee table, in easy reach. He also brings you the Anne Carson book you’ve been picking at and sets it on the cushion next to you.

“You may stay for as long as you like,” he says, gently patting your shoulder. “And if you would rather sleep here where it is lighter, you may certainly do that, if it is more comfortable for you. I can bring you more blankets and a pillow if you would like them.”

 _If I want them I’ll let you know,_ you say, and smile a little. _Thank you._

Asgore smiles in return, and goes back to the kitchen table.

You shift where you sit and narrow your eyes to look at the outside. It’s snowing from half-clear skies, translucent flakes falling leisurely and thick to pile up in glittering dunes, quiet. If it reached heights past which the front door could not open you would still feel as content.


End file.
